The spiritual leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics has suffered several health issues in the last year, but the pontiff is recovering well from his operation, the Vatican has said.

Cormac McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who in prose both dense and brittle took readers from the southern Appalachians to the desert Southwest in such novels as “The Road,” “Blood Meridian” and “All the Pretty Horses,” died Tuesday. He was 89.

Congolese dancer Faustin Linyekula honours his beautiful and troubled country through dance. The prolific award-winning artist, who's been a fixture of dance festivals in Avignon, Brussels and Johannesburg since the early 2000s, is in France with two shows at the Chaillot theatre in Paris. He speaks to Eve Jackson about reconnecting with Africa's history – lost and forgotten because of colonisation – and why he returned to his homeland to create his company Studio Kabako after establishing an international career as a dancer and choreographer.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church is "better than before," a doctor said, after he underwent a hernia operation.

Despite months of protests, the Israeli parliament has passed a crucial element of the government's controversial judicial reform which could change the balance of power and further divide Israeli society.

An undisclosed European government has bought dozens of second-hand tanks that once belonged to Belgium, according to the weapons dealer who sold them. The vehicles are to be stripped, repaired and then sent to Ukraine.

Comments Pope Francis made during a private discussion on a recent trip to Portugal criticizing the US Catholic Church, home to several of his more staunch opponents, have been made public in Italy.

China's largest property developer, Country Garden, warned that it is on the brink of default as it reported a staggering loss of almost $7 billion for the first half of the year, deepening a real estate crisis that threatens to unravel the country's already fragile economy.

With just over 1,400 Catholics, Mongolia is one of the smallest and newest Catholic communities in the world. Pope Francis makes the trip while also casting an eye toward China.

After a mass in Mongolia attended by some groups of Chinese Catholics, the pope told them to be "good Christians and good citizens."

At the end of his historic trip to the Buddhist nation, Pope Francis said the Catholic church is driven by faith to help the needy, and not as a way of attracting new converts.

Israel's Supreme Court has opened the first case examining the legality of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial overhaul, lurching towards a showdown with the nation’s far-right government. The latter has split Israel in two ever since it announced plans to reform the country’s judicial system, which would see the Supreme Court weakened.